Foundations of Oriental Art & Symbolism

This fascinating edited collection of art historian Titus Burckhardt's most important writings on Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist art is lavishly illustrated with 140 superb examples of Oriental art, architecture, statuary, and painting.

TITUS BURCKHARDT (1908-1984) was an acknowledged expert on the

sa-cred art of both the East and West This book is an edited collection of his most

important writings on the sacred art of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist

tradi-tions Lavishly illustrated with superb examples from Oriental art, architecture,

statuary, and painting, it also includes several fascinating chapters on the

symbol-ism of chess, the sacred mask, water, the mirror, and the dragon and serpent

Burckhardt was the author of over 20 books on sacred art, religion, culture,

and spirituality and worked for many years as a UNESCO expert, helping to

preserve the historic old city of Fez, Morocco.

This ILLUSTRATED EDITION features:

• An editor’s preface by award-winning author Michael Oren Fitzgerald;

• A foreword by Brian Keeble, co-founder of the Temenos Academy;

• 160 color illustrations of Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist art;

• 15 line drawings prepared or selected by Burckhardt.

“No one since the legendary A.K Coomaraswamy has been able to demonstrate how entire civilizations

defi ne themselves through their art with the precision of Titus Burckhardt.”

— Huston Smith , author of The World’s Religions and Why Religion Matters

“In a style at once clear and accessible and which carries a profound understanding lightly, Titus Burckhardt

touches effortlessly upon the essential, spiritual meaning of any given art form or work of art.”

— Brian Keeble , editor of Every Man An Artist, from the foreword

“Again and again one has the impression that [Burckhardt] has ‘said the last word’ on this or that particular

aspect It is seldom that one has the privilege of reading a work by an author who has such mastery of his

subject.”

— Martin Lings , author of Splendours of Qur’an Calligraphy and Illumination

“One of the leading authorities of the Perennialist school, Titus Burckhardt brought a unique

combina-tion of gifts to the exposicombina-tion of the world’s great wisdom tradicombina-tions Burckhardt was at home in a variety of

religious worlds and able to speak with authority on many wide-ranging subjects His eloquently written and

beautifully crafted books are enduring treasures.”

— James S Cutsinger , University of South Carolina, editor of Paths to the Heart

“Burckhardt’s thought is clear and soberly articulated, his argumentation intuitive and profound.”

— Victor Danner , Indiana University, author of The Islamic Tradition

ﱙﱚﱚﱙ ﱙﱚﱚﱙ

Foundations

of Oriental Art

& Symbolism

Th e Library of Perennial Philosophy is dedicated to the exposition of the timeless Truth underlying the diverse religions Th is Truth, often referred to as

the Sophia Perennis—or Perennial Wisdom—fi nds its expression in the revealed

Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and the artistic creations of the traditional worlds.

Foundations of Oriental Art & Symbolism appears as one of our selections in

the Sacred Art in Tradition series



Sacred Art in Tradition

Th e aim of this series is to underscore the essential role of beauty and its artistic expressions in the Perennial Philosophy Each volume contains full- color reproductions of masterpieces of traditional art—including painting, sculpture, architecture, and vestimentary art—combined with writings by authorities on each subject Individual titles focus either on one spiritual tradition or on a central theme that touches upon diverse traditions.

Foundations of

Oriental Art

&

Symbolism

Foreword by Brian Keeble

Titus Burckhardt

World Wisdom

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced

in any manner without written permission, except in critical articles and reviews.

Image research and book design by Susana Marín

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burckhardt, Titus

[Selections]

Foundations of oriental art & symbolism / Titus Burckhardt ; foreword by Brian Keeble ; edited

by Michael Oren Fitzgerald

p cm — (Sacred art in tradition series)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 978-1-933316-72-7 (pbk : alk paper) 1 Symbolism in art—Asia 2 Art and religion—Asia I Fitzgerald, Michael Oren, 1949- II Title III Title: Foundations of oriental art and symbolism

N7740.B87 2009

704.9’489095 dc22

2009010829

Cover image: Avalokiteshvara, Nepal, 14th century

Printed on acid-free paper in South Korea

For information address World Wisdom, Inc

P.O Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-2682

www.worldwisdom.com

Editor’s Preface vii

PART I: ORIENTAL ART

1 Introduction to Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist Art 3

PART II: SYMBOLISM

In order to understand a culture, it is necessary to love it, and one can only do this

on the basis of the universal and timeless values that it carries within it These values are essentially the same in all true cultures, that is to say, in cultures which meet not only the physical, but also the spiritual needs of man, without which his life has no meaning.…

Nothing brings us into such immediate contact with another culture as a work of art which, within that culture, represents, as it were a “center” Th is may

be a sacred image, a temple, a cathedral, a mosque, or even a carpet with a mordial design Such works invariably express an essential quality or factor, which neither a historical account, nor an analysis of social and economic conditions, can capture A similarly rich insight into another culture can be found in its literature, especially in those works that deal with eternal verities But such works are by defi nition profound and symbolical, and are mostly unintelligible to the modern reader without the aid of a detailed commentary A work of art, on the other hand, can, without any mental eff ort on our part, convey to us immediately and “exis-tentially”, a particular intellectual truth or spiritual attitude, and thereby grant

pri-us all manner of insights into the nature of the culture concerned Th us one can more readily understand the intellectual and ethical forms of a Buddhist culture,

if one is familiar with the Buddha-image that is typical of it; and one can much more easily form a picture of the religious and social life of the Middle Ages, if one has fi rst assimilated the architecture of a Romanesque abbey or a Gothic ca-thedral—always assuming, of course, that one is suffi ciently sensitive to the forms

of an authentic traditional art

Titus Burckhardt, Moorish Culture in Spain



The epigraph to this book by Titus Burckhardt (1908-1984), the late Swiss art historian and philosopher of religion, expresses for us the key importance of understanding the authentic traditional art forms of each of the world’s major cultures Burckhardt was one of the twentieth century’s foremost experts on the sacred forms of the traditional civilizations that surround each of the world’s great religions Three of his illustrated works focus on Christian art and culture1 while another three illustrated works center on Islamic art and culture.2 These books demonstrate Burckhardt’s unique ability to communicate the spiritual essence of the traditional Christian and Islamic worlds as if we had actually lived during those times.3

But Burckhardt was also an acknowledged expert on the sacred art of the Orient,

particu-larly in its Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist forms As Martin Lings has said of Sacred Art in East

and West, Burckhardt’s peerless work on the subject: “… again and again one has the

impres-sion that the author has ‘said the last word’ on this or that particular aspect … It is seldom that one has the privilege of reading a work by an author who has such mastery of his subject.”4

Foundations of Oriental Art & Symbolism is an edited collection of Burckhardt’s most

im-portant articles on Oriental art and symbolism, with page after page of illustrations from the traditional Oriental civilizations Th ese illustrations illuminate Burckhardt’s insightful descriptions and explanations, providing the reader with a small taste of the beauty that per-meated the traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist worlds—a beauty that has in large part been overwhelmed and swallowed by our modern era Part I, “Oriental Art”, begins with Burckhardt’s introduction to traditional Oriental art In the following three chapters he then explores the artistic foundations of each of the three great Oriental religions: Hinduism, Bud-dhism, and Taoism, focusing particularly on the Hindu temple, the Buddha image, and Chi-nese landscape painting

1 Burckhardt’s Siena: City of the Virgin depicts, in his own words, “the destiny of a town in which the spiritual

development of the Christian Western world from the Middle Ages up to the present day is exemplifi ed” Burckhardt’s masterwork on Christian sacred architecture is also best described in his own words: “Th e

purpose of my book Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral was to evoke, as authentically as possible, the

spiritual climate in which the Gothic cathedral was born My aim is to show how the Gothic cathedral was the fi nal fruit to ripen on the tree of an ancient tradition.” Th e award-winning anthology, Foundations of

Christian Art, is a complement to these books Further bibliographical details of Burckhardt’s writings can

be found at the end of this volume.

2 Moorish Culture in Spain presents central elements of the Islamic culture that ruled Spain for half centuries Fez: City of Islam presents the history of a people and their religion based upon Burckhardt’s

eight-and-a-unrivaled knowledge of the city that he tirelessly helped to preserve under the auspices of UNESCO

Burckhardt’s Art of Islam: Language and Meaning is considered by many to be the defi nitive study of the

sacred art of Islam.

3 A selection of some of his other books on traditional art, science, culture, and spirituality is presented at the end of this volume.

4 Martin Lings, “In Memoriam: Titus Burckhardt”, Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol 16, No 1, pp

99-102.

Part II, “Symbolism”, begins with two chapters that answer the fundamental questions,

“What is symbolism?” and “How are traditional symbols to be interpreted?” Burckhardt’s planations provide insights that enable us to compare the underlying spiritual values that are the foundation for traditional cultures, with the quantitative analyses that are the starting point for today’s technological societies In the following fi ve chapters Burckhardt then explores examples of selected recurring symbols in the Oriental worlds, such as the mirror, the sacred

ex-mask, and the serpent and dragon Also of particular interest is the symbol of the mandala,

which Burckhardt analyzes extensively in his chapters on the Hindu temple and the game of chess

An understanding of symbolism is integral to an appreciation of sacred and traditional art, for symbols manifest both Truth (through their doctrinal meaning) and Beauty (through their sacred presence) As Burckhardt says:

Every sacred art is … founded on a science of forms, or in other words, on the ism inherent in forms It must be borne in mind that a symbol is not merely a conven-tional sign It manifests its archetype by virtue of a defi nite ontological law; as Cooma-

symbol-raswamy has observed, a symbol is in a certain sense that to which it gives expression

For this very reason traditional symbolism is never without beauty: according to the spiritual view of the world, the beauty of an object is nothing but the transparency of its existential envelopes; an art worthy of the name is beautiful because it is true.5

Th e selections presented here are taken from four of Burckhardt’s books: Sacred Art in East

and West, Moorish Culture in Spain, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, and Mirror

of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, the latter being a collection of his

es-says published in various journals.6 Several of the articles on symbolism were edited to remove paragraphs that are devoted exclusively to Western traditions, as the focus of this work is on the Orient However, short references to Western traditions remain throughout the text, pro-viding readers with a glimpse of Burckhardt’s vast knowledge of many of the world’s spiritual traditions, while at the same time providing us with a deeper understanding of these subjects

William Stoddart provided a fi tting summary of his close friend in his editor’s Preface to Th e

Essential Titus Burckhardt: “One of the things that strikes one most forcibly about Titus

Burck-hardt is the vastness of his range of interests Th e world was indeed his parish.”

Michael Fitzgerald

July 2008, Bloomington, Indiana

5 See chapter 1, “Introduction to Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist Art”, p 4

6 Th e sources are noted in the respective chapters Th e chapters “Th e Symbolism of Chess” and “Th e Sacred

Mask” both appeared in the journal Studies in Comparative Religion and are available online at http://www.

studiesincomparativereligion.com

Although, as its title announces, this is a book about Oriental art, it would be as well for the reader to recognize that it is, in effect, an introduction to art as such That is to say, having read

it, the reader has been told what art is (according to the time-honoured conception of art as the perfection of work); why art matters (in respect of the traditional conception of man’s deiform nature); and in what the significance of art resides (in the light of the universal, metaphysical vision of the world as the manifestation of the eternal Reality of the Divine Principle) This may sound ponderous, but in fact the opposite is the case: in a style at once clear and accessible and which carries a profound understanding lightly, Titus Burckhardt touches effortlessly upon the essential, spiritual meaning of any given art form or work of art It has been said of Frithjof Schuon that he had only to see a single work of traditional art in order to penetrate to the heart of the total spiritual ambience of a given sacred tradition Burckhardt too possessed more than a little of this gift

An important reason why Burckhardt wrote so tellingly of the arts (the present

compila-tion is a companion to the earlier Th e Foundacompila-tions of Christian Art) is that his approach to the

subject is not limited to that of the academic historian Burckhardt was certainly scholarly, but

he does not speak of works of art as if they are an illustration of a cultural evolution whose nifi cance relates to historical factors alone Th is is in fact a betrayal of how we experience works

sig-of art in so far as we witness the qualities that are integral to their making In the presence sig-of

an object of beauty, the soul is touched with immediate eff ect and to its spiritual benefi t; but present before a work of merely human “art” it witnesses the manifestation of ego Th e latter occludes and distracts with what is, spiritually speaking, superfl uous; the former illuminates and enlivens our very being

Burckhardt allows the reader to experience a work of art as a beautifully crafted object that plunges us immediately into the presence of Beauty Itself, not as an exclusively aesthetic emo-tion but as a profoundly integrative experience that has resonances for the total relationship of man to both his worldly and cosmic environment

What helps to make Burckhardt’s presentation so eff ective in this respect is that he takes account of the psychological “adjustments” needed for the modern mind to approach Oriental art of a traditional nature Th e bias of the modern Western (but increasingly global) mental-ity associates art with the emotional reactions of personal sensibility that in turn are allowed

to multiply in the service of a spurious innovative spirit in which the intelligence is more or less suspended in a debilitating limbo Nothing could be further from what motivates the sensibility of the traditional craftsmen who have made the objects illustrated in these pages Burckhardt, while taking account of this modernist bias, none the less “dissolves” its presup-positions and prejudices by virtue of his gift for describing the particular conjunction of the spiritual and the aesthetic in a given work of art

In all likelihood Burckhardt wrote his books on art knowing that—with the exception of

Art of Islam—he would not have the luxury of frequent illustration In the present case he has

been given the benefi t of superb and plentiful pictures which present the reader with an portunity to underscore an appreciation of the text with a direct reference to visual examples

op-of the objects under discussion No doubt this facility would have met with the author’s ful approval.

grate-Among the essential elements of Frithjof Schuon’s exposition of the gnosis of realization

is the necessity for a science of symbols based on the transparency of phenomena Burckhardt’s last chapter here on the symbolism of water perfectly exemplifi es the content and applicability

of this aspect of Schuon’s teaching to every dimension of human life And its closing lines are prescient of things to come—hardly yet taken fully into account—whose advent is nearer to

us than it was to the author when he made these observations

Brian Keeble

Introduction to Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist Art1

When historians of art apply the term “sacred art” to any and every work

that has a religious subject, they are forgetting that art is essentially form

An art cannot properly be called “sacred” solely on the grounds that its

subjects originate in a spiritual truth; its formal language also must bear

witness to a similar origin Such is by no means the case with a religious

art like that of the Renaissance or of the Baroque period, which is in no

way distinct, so far as style is concerned, from the fundamentally profane

art of that era; neither the subjects which it borrows, in a wholly exterior

and as it were literary manner, from religion, nor the devotional feelings

with which it is permeated in appropriate cases, nor even the nobility

of soul which sometimes finds expression in it, suffice to confer on it a

sacred character No art merits that epithet unless its forms themselves

reflect the spiritual vision characteristic of a particular religion

Every form is the vehicle of a given quality of being Th e religious

subject of a work of art may be as it were superimposed, it may have

no relation to the formal “language” of the work, as is demonstrated by

Christian art since the Renaissance; there are therefore essentially

pro-fane works of art with a sacred theme, but on the other hand there exists

no sacred work of art which is profane in form, for there is a rigorous

analogy between form and spirit A spiritual vision necessarily fi nds its

expression in a particular formal language; if that language is lacking,

with the result that a so-called sacred art borrows its forms from some

kind of profane art, then it can only be because a spiritual vision of

things is also lacking

It is useless to try to excuse the Protean style of a religious art, or

its indefi nite and ill-defi ned character, on grounds of the universality of

dogma or the freedom of the spirit Granted that spirituality in itself is

independent of forms, this in no way implies that it can be expressed

and transmitted by any and every sort of form Th rough its qualitative

essence, form has a place in the sensible order analogous to that of truth

in the intellectual order; this is the signifi cance of the Greek notion of

eidos Just as a mental form such as a dogma or a doctrine can be the

adequate, albeit limited, refl ection of a Divine Truth, so can a sensible

form retrace a truth or a reality which transcends both the plane of

sensible forms and the plane of thought

1 Editor’s Note: From the Introduction

to Sacred Art in East and West

(Bloom-ington, IN: World Wisdom Books/ Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2002).

Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva of Mercy,

Nepal, c 12th century

Every sacred art is therefore founded on a science of forms, or in other words, on the symbolism inherent in forms It must be borne in mind that a symbol is not merely a conventional sign It manifests its archetype by virtue of a defi nite ontological law; as Coomaraswamy

has observed, a symbol is in a certain sense that to which it gives

ex-pression For this very reason traditional symbolism is never without beauty: according to the spiritual view of the world, the beauty of an object is nothing but the transparency of its existential envelopes; an art worthy of the name is beautiful because it is true

It is neither possible nor even useful that every artist or craftsman engaged in sacred art should be conscious of the Divine Law inherent

in forms; he will know only certain aspects of it, or certain applications that arise within the limits of the rules of his craft; these rules will enable him to paint an icon, to fashion a sacred vessel, or to practice calligraphy in a liturgically valid manner, without its being necessary for him to know the ultimate signifi cance of the symbols he is working with It is tradition that transmits the sacred models and the work-ing rules, and thereby guarantees the spiritual validity of the forms Tradition has within itself a secret force which is communicated to an entire civilization and determines even arts and crafts the immediate objects of which include nothing particularly sacred Th is force creates

Bronze wine jar with dragon design,

China, Shang Dynasty, c 1523-1028 B.C.

Illustrated frontispiece to the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, Japan, Heian period, late 12th century

the style of a traditional civilization; a style that could never be imitated

from outside is perpetuated without diffi culty, in a quasi-organic

man-ner, by the power of the spirit that animates it and by nothing else

One of the most tenacious of typically modern prejudices is the

one that sets itself up against the impersonal and objective rules of an

art, for fear that they should stifl e creative genius In reality no work

exists that is traditional, and therefore “bound” by changeless principles,

which does not give sensible expression to a certain creative joy of the

soul; whereas modern individualism has produced, apart from a few

works of genius which are nevertheless spiritually barren, all the

ugli-ness—the endless and despairing ugliness—of the forms which

perme-ate the “ordinary life” of our times

One of the fundamental conditions of happiness is to know that

everything that one does has a meaning in eternity; but who in these

days can still conceive of a civilization within which all vital

manifesta-tions would be developed “in the likeness of Heaven”?2 In a theocentric

society the humblest activity parti cipates in this heavenly benediction

Th e words of a street singer heard by the author in Morocco are worth

quoting here Th e singer was asked why the little Arab guitar which he

used to accompany his chanting of legends had only two strings He

gave this answer: “To add a third string to this instrument would be to

take the fi rst step towards heresy When God created the soul of Adam

it did not want to enter into his body, and circled like a bird round about

its cage Th en God commanded the angels to play on the two strings

that are called the male and the female, and the soul, thinking that

the melody resided in the instrument—which is the body—entered it

and remained within it For this reason two strings, which are always

called the male and the female, are enough to deliver the soul from the

body.”

Th is legend holds more meaning than appears at fi rst sight, for it

summarizes the whole traditional doctrine of sacred art Th e ultimate

objective of sacred art is not the evocation of feelings nor the

communi-cation of impressions; it is a symbol, and as such it fi nds simple and

pri-mordial means suffi cient; it could not in any case be anything more than

allusive, its real object being ineff able It is of angelic origin, because its

models refl ect supra-formal realities It recapitulates the creation—the

“ Divine Art”—in parables, thus demonstrating the symbolical nature of

the world, and delivering the human spirit from its attachment to crude

and ephemeral “facts”

Th e angelic origin of art is explicitly formulated by the Hindu

tra-dition According to the Aitareya Brāhmana every work of art in the

world is achieved by imitation of the art of the devas, “whether it be

an elephant in terra-cotta, a bronze object, an article of clothing, a gold

ornament, or a mule-cart” Th e devas correspond to the angels

Chris-tian legends attributing an angelic origin to certain miraculous images

embody the same idea

2 “Do you not know, O Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of Heaven and that

it is the projection here below of the whole ordering of Heavenly things?”

(Hermes Trismegistus, from the French

translation of L Ménard).

Uma worshiping Shiva, Indian miniature, 18th century

Above: The Goddess Sita, India, Chola period, c 985 Right: The God Rama, India, Chola period, c 975

Th e devas are nothing more nor less than particular functions of

the universal Spirit, permanent expressions of the Will of God Th e

doctrine common to traditional civilizations prescribes that sacred art

must imitate the Divine Art, but it must be clearly understood that

this in no way implies that the complete Divine creation, the world

such as we see it, should be copied, for such would be pure pretension;

a literal “ naturalism” is foreign to sacred art What must be copied is

the way in which the Divine Spirit works Its laws must be transposed

into the restricted domain in which man works as man, that is to say,

into artisanship



In no traditional doctrine does the idea of the Divine Art play so

fundamental a part as in the Hindu doctrine For Māyā is not only the

mysterious Divine Power which causes the world to appear to exist

outside the Divine Reality, so that it is from her, from Māyā, that all

duality and all illusion spring: she is also in her positive aspect the

Divine Art which produces all form In principle she is not other than

the possibility contained in the Infinite of limiting Itself, as the object

of Its own “vision”, without Its infinity being thereby limited Thus God

manifests Himself in the world, yet equally He does not so manifest

Himself; He expresses Himself and at the same time keeps silence

Just as the Absolute objectivizes, by virtue of its Māyā certain

as-pects of Itself, or certain possibilities contained in Itself, and determines

them by a distinctive vision, so does the artist realize in his work certain

aspects of himself; he projects them as it were outside his undiff

erenti-ated being And to the extent that his objectivation refl ects the secret

depths of his being, it will take on a purely symbolical character, and at

the same time the artist will become more and more conscious of the

abyss dividing the form, refl ector of his essence, from what that essence

really is in its timeless plenitude Th e creative artist knows this: this

form is myself, nevertheless I am infi nitely more than it, for the

Es-sence remains the pure Knower, the witness which no form can

com-pass; but he also knows that it is God who expresses Himself through

his work, so that the work in its turn surpasses the feeble and fallible

ego of the man.

Herein lies the analogy between Divine Art and human art: in

the realization of oneself by objectivation If this objectivation is to

have spiritual signifi cance and not to be merely a vague

introver-sion, its means of expression must spring from an essential vision In

other words, it must not be the “I”, that root of illusion and of

ig-norance of oneself, which arbitrarily chooses those means; they

must be borrowed from tradition, from the formal and “objective”

revelation of the supreme Being, Who is the “Self ” of all beings

A celestial female, Madhya Pradesh, India, 11th-12th century

Amida Buddha, Kotoku-in, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, mid 13th century

According to the Taoist view of things the Divine Art is essentially the art

of transformation: the whole of nature is ceaselessly being transformed,

always in accordance with the laws of the cycle; its contrasts revolve

round a single center which always eludes apprehension Nevertheless

anyone who under stands this circular movement is thereby enabled

to recognize the center which is its essence The purpose of art is to

conform to this cosmic rhythm The most simple formula states that

mastery in art consists in the capacity to trace a perfect circle in a single

movement, and thus to identify oneself implicitly with its center, while

that center remains unspecified as such



In so far as it is possible to transpose the notion of “Divine Art” into

Buddhism, which avoids all personification of the Absolute, it can

be applied to the beauty of the Buddha, miraculous and mentally

unfathomable as it is Whereas no doctrine concerned with God can

escape, as far as its formulation is con cerned, from the illusory character

of mental processes, which attribute their own limits to the limitless and

their own conjectural forms to the formless, the beauty of the Buddha

radiates a state of being beyond the power of thought to define This

beauty is reflected in the beauty of the lotus: it is perpetuated ritually in

the painted or modeled image of the Buddha



In one way or another all these fundamental aspects of sacred art

can be found, in varying proportions, in each of the great traditions

just mentioned, for there is not one of them that does not possess in

its essentials all the fullness of Divine Truth and Grace, so that in

principle it would be capable of manifesting every possible form of

spirituality Nevertheless, since each religion is necessarily dominated

by a particular point of view which determines its spiritual “economy”,

its artistic manifestations, being naturally collective and not isolated,

will reflect this point of view and this economy each in its own style

It is moreover in the nature of form to be unable to express anything

without excluding something, because form delimits what it expresses,

excluding thereby some aspects of its own universal archetype This law

is naturally applicable at every level of formal manifestation, and not to

art alone; the various Divine Revelations on which the different religions

are founded are also mutually exclusive when attention is directed to

their formal contours only, rather than to their Divine Essence which

is one Here again the analogy between “Divine Art” and human art

becomes apparent

Detail from a Japanese screen

Attention will be confi ned in the present work to the art of the

great traditions already named, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism,

since the artistic rules appropriate to each are not only deducible from

existing works, but are also confi rmed by canonical writings and by

the example of living masters Within this framework it will only be

possible to concentrate on a few aspects of each art, chosen as

spe-cially typical, the subject as a whole being inexhaustible Hindu art will

be considered fi rst, as its methods have shown the greatest continuity

through the ages; by taking it as an example one can show the

con-nection between the arts of medieval civilizations and those of much

more ancient civilizations As for the art of the Far East, the Buddhist

and the Taoist, it must suffi ce to defi ne some of their aspects, chosen as

characteristic yet clearly distinguished from those of the arts dealt with

earlier; the comparisons drawn will then serve to indicate the great

variety of traditional expression

Th e reader will have understood that no sacred art exists which

does not depend on some aspect or other of metaphysic Th e science of

metaphysic is itself limitless, like its object which is infi nite, so that it

will not be possible to specify all the relationships which link together

the diff erent metaphysical doctrines It will therefore be best to refer

the reader to other books which set out as it were the premises on

which this book is based; the books in question make accessible the

essence of the traditional doctrines of the East and of the medieval

West in a language that can be understood by a modern European

In this connection the fi rst to be named must be the works of René

Guénon,3 of Frithjof Schuon,4 and of Ananda Coomaraswamy.5 In

ad-dition, and as being concerned with the sacred art of particular

tradi-tions, the book by Stella Kramrisch on the Hindu temple,6 the studies

of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, and the book by Eugen

Herrigel (Bungaku Hakushi) on the knightly art of archery in Zen.7

Other books will be mentioned in their place, and traditional sources

will be quoted, as occasion demands

3 Editor’s Note: See Th e Essential René

Guénon: Metaphysics, Tradition, and the Crisis of Modernity, edited by John

Herlihy (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009).

4 Editor’s Note: See Frithjof Schuon,

Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, edited by Catherine Schuon

(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom,

2006) and Th e Essential Frithjof

Schuon, edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005).

5 Editor’s Note: See Th e Essential

Anan-da K Coomaraswamy, edited by Rama

P Coomaraswamy (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2004).

6 Th e Hindu Temple (Calcutta:

Univer-sity of Calcutta, 1946).

7 Zen in the Art of Archery, translated

from the German by R F C Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953).

Lotus in Full Bloom, China, Song Dynasty, 12th-13th century

Th e Genesis of the Hindu Temple1

I

Among settled peoples the sacred art par excellence is the building of a

sanctuary, in which the Divine Spirit, invisibly present in the universe,

will “dwell” in a direct and as it were “personal” sense.2 Spiritually

speaking, a sanctuary is always situated at the center of the world, and

it is this that makes it a sacratum in the true sense of the word: in such

a place man is protected from the indefinity of space and time, since it

is “here” and “now” that God is present to man This is expressed in the

design of the temple; its emphasis on the cardinal directions co-ordinates

space in relation to its center The design is a synthesis of the world:

that which is in ceaseless movement within the universe is transposed

by sacred architecture into permanent form In the cosmos time prevails

over space: the great rhythm of the visible cosmos, symbolizing the

principial aspects of an existence disjoined and dispersed by becoming,

are re-assembled and stabilized in the geometry of the building The

temple thus represents, through its regular and unalterable form,

the completion of the world, the timeless aspect or final state of the

world, wherein all things are at rest in the equilibrium that precedes

their reintegration into the undivided unity of Being The sanctuary

prefigures the final transfiguration of the world—a transfiguration

symbolized in Christianity by the “ Heavenly Jerusalem”—and for this

reason alone it is filled with the Divine Peace ( shekhina in Hebrew,

shānti in Sanskrit).

Similarly the Divine Peace descends into a soul whose every

mo-dality or every content—analogous to those of the world—reposes in

an equilibrium both simple and rich, and comparable in its qualitative

unity to the regular form of a sanctuary

Th e edifi cation of a sanctuary, like that of a soul, has also an aspect

of sacrifi ce Th e powers of the soul must be withdrawn from the world

if it is to become a receptacle of Grace, and for exactly analogous

rea-sons the materials for the construction of a temple must be withdrawn

from all profane use and must be off ered to the Divinity We shall see

that this sacrifi ce is necessary as a compensation for the “divine

sacri-fi ce” which is at the origin of the world In every sacrisacri-fi ce the substance

sacrifi ced undergoes a qualitative transformation, in the sense of its

be-1 Editor’s Note: From Sacred Art in

East and West, chapter 1.

2 In primitive civilizations every dwelling is regarded as an image of the cosmos, for the house or the tent

“contains” and “envelops” man on the model of the great world Th is notion has survived in the language of the most diverse peoples, who speak of the

“vault” or the “tent” of the sky, and of its “summit” to signify the pole When

a building is a sanctuary the analogy between it and the cosmos becomes reciprocal, because the Divine Spirit

“inhabits” the sanctuary just as It

“inhabits” the universe On the other hand the Spirit contains the universe,

so that the analogy is also valid in an inverse sense.

Opposite: The Shore Temple, Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, 7th century

ing assimilated to a divine model Th is is no less evident in the building

of a sanctuary, and in this connection a well-known example may be cited, that of the building of the Temple at Jerusalem by Solomon in accordance with the plan revealed to David

Th e completion of the world prefi gured in the temple is ized in the rectangular form of the temple, a form essentially opposed

symbol-to the circular form of a world driven onward by the cosmic ment Whereas the spherical form of the sky is indefi nite and is not accessible to any kind of measurement, the rectangular or cubical form

move-of a sacred edifi ce expresses a positive and immutable law, and that is why all sacred architecture, whatever may be the tradition to which it belongs, can be seen as a development of the fundamental theme of the transformation of the circle into the square In the genesis of the Hindu Temple the development of this theme is particularly clearly seen, with all the richness of its metaphysical and spiritual content

Before pursuing this matter further it must be made clear that the relation between these two fundamental symbols, the circle and the square or the sphere and the cube, may carry diff erent meanings ac-cording to the plane of reference If the circle is taken as the symbol of the undivided unity of the Principle, the square will signify its fi rst and

Kailasanatha Temple, Cave 16, Ellora, Maharashtra, built between the 5th and 10th centuries

changeless determination, the universal Law or Norm: and in this case

the circle will indicate a reality superior to that suggested by the square

Th e same is true if the circle is related to the heavens, the movement of

which it reproduces, and the square to the earth, the solid and relatively

inert state of which it recapitulates; the circle will then be to the square

as the active is to the passive, or as life is to the body, for it is the heavens

that engender actively, while the earth conceives and gives birth

pas-sively It is however possible to envisage an inversion of this hierarchy:

if the square is considered in its metaphysical signifi cance, as the

sym-bol of principial immutability, which in its turn contains and resolves

within itself all cosmic antinomies, and if the circle is correspondingly

considered in relation to its cosmic model, which is endless movement,

then the square will represent a reality superior to that represented by

the circle; for the permanent and immutable nature of the Principle

transcends the celestial or cosmic activity, which is relatively exterior

to the Principle itself.3 Th is last symbolical relationship between the

circle and the square predominates in the sacred architecture of India

Th is is both because the quality that belongs specially to architecture

is stability—it is through its stability that architecture refl ects the

Di-vine Perfection most directly—and also because the point of view in

question is essentially inherent in the Hindu spirit Th e Hindu spirit

is in fact always inclined to transpose terrestrial and cosmic realities,

divergent though they be, into the non-separative and static plenitude

of the Divine Essence Th is spiritual transfi guration is accompanied in

sacred architec ture by an inversely analogous symbolism, wherein the

great “measures” of time, the various cycles, are “crystallized” in the

fun-damental square of the temple.4 We shall see later how this square is

arrived at by the fi xation of the principal movements of the heavens

In any case the symbolical predominance of the square over the circle

in sacred architecture does not exclude, either in India or elsewhere,

manifestations of an inverse relation between the two symbols,

wherev-er such invwherev-ersion becomes appropriate in view of the analogy between

the various constructional elements and the corresponding parts of the

universe

Th e “crystallization” of all cosmic realities in a geometrical symbol,

which is like an inverted image of the timeless, is prefi gured in the

Hindu tradition by the construction of the Vedic altar Its cubical shape,

built up from bricks laid in several courses, represents the “body” of

Prajāpati,5 the total cosmic being Th e devas6 immolated this primordial

being at the beginning of the world; his disjointed limbs, which

consti-tute the multiple aspects or parts of the cosmos,7 have to be

symboli-cally reassembled

Prajāpati is the Principle in its manifested aspect; this aspect

in-cludes the totality of the world, and appears as if fragmented by the

diversity and changeability of the world Seen in this way Prajāpati is

as it were torn by time; he is identifi ed with the solar cycle, the year,

3 Th is view of things corresponds to the Vedantin point of view, which attributes dynamism to the passive

substance, the Shakti, while the active

Essence remains motionless.

4 Similarly the design of the Christian temple symbolizes the transmutation

of the present “age” into a future

“age”: the sacred edifi ce represents the Heavenly Jerusalem, the shape of which is also square.

5 Th e reader to whom the Hindu terms used in this chapter are unfamiliar need not try to memorize those that are enclosed in parentheses Th e inclusion of the latter is necessary both for the sake of accuracy, since

in most cases no short form of words

in English can be exactly equivalent

to the Hindu term, and also in order

to facilitate reference to other works dealing with the Hindu tradition.

6 According to the terminology of

the monotheistic religions the devas

correspond to the angels, in so far as the latter represent divine aspects.

7 Th is recalls the dismemberment of the body of Osiris in the Egyptian myth.

also with the lunar cycle, the month, but above all with the sal cycle, or with the totality of all cosmic cycles In his Essence he

univer-is not other than Purusha, the immutable and indivuniver-isible Essence of man and of the universe; according to the Rig Veda (X.90) it is Purusha whom the devas sacrifi ced at the beginning of the world, in order to

constitute the various parts of the universe and the diff erent kinds of living beings Th is must not be understood as “pantheism”, for Purusha

is not divided in himself, nor is he “localized” in ephemeral beings; it

is only his manifested and apparent form that is sacrifi ced, while his eternal nature remains as it ever was, so that he is at the same time

the victim, the sacrifi ce, and the goal of the sacrifi ce As for the devas,

they represent divine aspects, or more exactly modalities or functions

of the Divine Act or Intellect ( Buddhi corresponding to the Logos)

Multiplicity is not in the nature of God but in the nature of the world;

it is none the less prefi gured principially by the distinctions that can be made between the various aspects or functions of the Divine, and it is these aspects or functions that “sacrifi ce” God in manifesting Him in separate mode.8

Th enceforward every sacrifi ce reproduces and in some degree

com-pensates the pre-temporal sacrifi ce of the devas; the unity of the total

being is symbolically and spiritually reconstituted by the rite Th e offi ciant identifi es himself with the altar which he has built in the likeness

-of the universe and to the measurements -of his own body; he identifi es himself also with the sacrifi cial animal, which replaces him by its pos-session of certain qualities;9 and fi nally his spirit is identifi ed with the

fi re which reintegrates the off ering in principial illimitation.10 Th e man,

the altar, the holocaust, and the fi re are alike Prajāpati, who is himself

the Divine Essence

8 Th e myth of the immolation of

Prajāpati by the devas is analogous

to the Sufi c doctrine according to

which God manifested the multiple

universe by virtue of His multiple

Names, the diversity of the world

being as it were “necessitated” by

the Names Th e analogy in question

becomes still more striking when it is

said that God manifests Himself in

the world by virtue of His Names See

the author’s book, Introduction to Sufi

Doctrine (Bloomington, IN: World

Wisdom, 2008) and his translation

of the Wisdom of the Prophets (Fusūs

al-Hikām) of Muhyi-d-dīn ibn ‘Arabī

(Sherbourne: Beshara, 1975).

9 Although man is superior to the

animal by virtue of his celestial

“mandate”, the animal shows a relative

superiority to man in so far as man

has lost his primordial nature, for

the animal does not fall away in the

same way from its cosmic norm

Th e sacrifi ce of an animal in place

of a man is ritually justifi ed only by

the existence of a kind of qualitative

compensation.

10 Union with the Divine Essence

always comprises, as phases or

aspects of a single spiritual act, the

reintegration of all the positive aspects

of the world—or of their interior

equivalents—in a symbolical “hearth”,

the sacrifi ce of the soul in its limited

aspect and its trans formation by the

fi re of the Spirit.

The Ashvamedha Yajna tank, Nagarjunakonda, 2nd century

Th e analogy between the universe and the sacrifi cial altar is

ex-pressed in the number and the arrangement of the bricks of which it

is built Th e analogy between the altar and the man is expressed in the

proportions of the altar, which are derived from the measurements of

the human body Th e side of the base corresponds to the stretch of a

man with arms extended, the bricks are a foot long, the navel ( nābhi)

of the altar is a span square In addition, the “golden man”, a schematic

fi gure of a man which must be walled into the altar with the head

turned to the East—the holocaust being always in this

position—in-dicates the analogy between man and the sacrifi cial victim We shall

see later on that these same symbolical features are implicit in the

con-struction of a temple

II

The altar exists before the temple In other words the art of building

an altar is more ancient and more universal than is sacred architecture

properly so called, for altars are used both by nomadic and by settled

peoples, whereas temples exist only among the latter The primitive

Brick arrangement for performance of

homa (Vedic sacrifice)

Altars for performance of puja (ritual worship)

sanctuary is the sacred area surrounding the altar; the rites employed for consecrating and delimiting this area were later transposed to the

founding of a temple (templum in Latin originally meant the sacred precinct set apart for the contemplation of the cosmos) There are many indications to support the conclusion that these rites constitute

a primordial inheritance linking together the two great currents of nomadic and settled peoples, in other respects so different in their styles

of living.11

A particularly eloquent testimony to this primordial legacy is sented by the following quotation from a priest and sage belonging to the nomadic Sioux Indians, Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk) He describes the consecration of a fi re altar thus: “Taking the axe, he (the offi ciant) pointed it towards the six directions, and then struck the ground to the West Repeating the same movement he struck the ground to the North, then in the same way to the East and to the South; then he raised the axe skywards and struck the ground twice in the center for the earth, and then twice for the Great Spirit Having done this, he scratched the soil and, with a stick which he had purifi ed in the smoke and off ered to the six directions, he drew a line running from the West to the center, then from the East to the center, then from the North to the center and fi nally from the South to the center; then he off ered the stick to the heavens and touched the center, and to the earth and touched the center In this way the altar was made; in the manner described, we fi xed

pre-in this place the center of the world, and this center, which pre-in reality is everywhere, is the dwelling-place of the Great Spirit.”12

As this example shows, the consecration of the altar consists in the evocation of the relationships which connect the principal aspects

of the universe with its center Th ese aspects are: heaven, which in its generative activity is opposed to the earth, the passive and maternal principle, and the four directions or “winds”, whose forces determine the cycle of the day and the changes of the seasons; they correspond to

as many powers or aspects of the Universal Spirit.13Whereas the normal shape of a temple is rectangular, the nomadic altar such as has been described is not square in outline, even though its origin is the quaternary of the celestial regions Th is is explained by the “style” appropriate to the nomadic life; to nomads buildings that are rectangular in shape express the fi xation of death.14

Nomadic sanctuaries, made like tents or cabins of live branches, are generally round;15 their model is the dome of the sky Similarly nomadic encampments are arranged in circular form, and the same practice is sometimes found in the cities of nomadic peoples who have become sedentary, like the Parthians Th us it is that the cosmic polarity of the circle and the square is refl ected in the contrast between nomadic and sedentary peoples: the former recognize their ideal in the dynamic and limitless nature of the circle, whereas the latter see theirs in the static character and the regularity of the square.16 But apart from these dif-

11 Th e patriarchs of the nomadic

people of Israel built altars under

the open sky, from unworked stones

When Solomon built the temple in

Jerusalem, thereby consecrating the

sedentary condition of the people, the

stones were worked without the use of

iron tools, in memory of the manner

of building the primitive altar.

12 See Th e Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s

Account of the Rites of the Oglala Sioux,

recorded by Joseph Epes Brown

(Norman: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1953 and 1989).

13 See Frithjof Schuon, Th e Feathered

Sun (Bloomington, IN: World

Wisdom Books, 1990) and Language

of the Self (Bloomington, IN: World

Wisdom Books, 1999), the chapter

“Th e Sacred Pipe of the Red Indians”

14 “Everything the Power of the

World does is done in a circle Th e

sky is round, and I have heard that

the earth is round like a ball, and

so are all the stars Th e wind, in its

greatest power, whirls Birds make

their nests in circles, for theirs is the

same religion as ours Our tepees were

round like the nests of birds, and these

were always set in a circle, the nation’s

hoop, a nest of many nests, where the

Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our

children” ( Hehaka Sapa in Black Elk

Speaks, related by John Neihardt [New

York: William Morrow, 1932], p 198).

15 Th e same is the case with the

prehistoric sanctuaries called

“cromlechs”, in which the circle of

upright stones reproduces the cyclical

divisions of the heavens.

16 Sometimes the static perfection of

the square or the cube is combined

with the dynamic symbolism of

the circle Such is the case with the

Kaaba, which is the center of a rite

of circumambulation, and is without

doubt one of the oldest of sanctuaries

ferences of style the conception of the sanctuary remains the same;

whether it be built of solid materials like the temples of sedentary

peo-ples, or whether it be no more than a sacratum established temporarily

like the nomadic altar, it is always situated at the center of the world

Hehaka Sapa says of this center that it is the dwelling place of the

Great Spirit, and that it is in reality everywhere; that is why a

symboli-cal point of reference is suffi cient for its realization

Th e ubiquity of the spiritual center also fi nds an expression in the

sensible order in the fact that the directions of space, which diverge

in accordance with the motionless axes of the starry sky, converge in

the same way on every point situated on the earth; the visual axes of

two terrestrial observers looking at the same star are in fact practically

parallel, whatever may be the geographical distance separating them In

other words, there is no “perspective” from the point of view of the

star-It has been many times rebuilt, but its shape, which is that of a slightly irregular cube, has not been altered

in historical times Th e four corners

( arkān) of the Kaaba are oriented

towards the cardinal regions of the sky Th e rite of circumambulation

( tawāf) is a part of the pilgrimage to

the Kaaba and was simply perpetuated

by Islam It expresses with precision the relationship existing between the sanctuary and the celestial movement

It is accomplished seven times, to correspond with the number of the celestial spheres, three times at racing speed and four times at walking pace According to legend the Kaaba was fi rst built by an angel, or by Seth, son of Adam It was then in the shape

of a pyramid; the deluge destroyed it; Abraham rebuilt it in the shape of

a cube (ka‘bah) It is situated on the

axis of the world, its prototype is in the heavens, where the angels perform

the tawāf around it Still according

to legend, the Divine Presence

( Sakīnah) appeared in the form of a

serpent which led Abraham to the place where he must build the Kaaba; the serpent coiled itself round the building Th is recalls in a striking way the Hindu symbolism of the serpent (Ananta or Shesha), which moves round the precinct of the temple

We shall see later that the Hindu temple is also the center of a rite of circumambulation.

Jagannath Temple, Puri, Orissa, 12th century

ry sky: its center is everywhere, for its vault—the universal temple—is measureless Similarly, anyone watching the sun rising or setting over a surface of water sees the golden path of the rays refl ected in the water leading straight towards him If he moves, the path of light follows him; but every other observer sees the path leading no less directly to himself Th ese facts have a profound signifi cance.17

III

The basic plan of the temple is derived from the procedure of its orientation, which is a rite in the proper sense of the word, for it connects the form of the sanctuary with that of the universe, which in this case is the expression of the divine norm A pillar is set up in the place chosen for the building of the temple, and a circle is traced round

it The pillar serves as gnomon, and its shadow thrown onto the circle marks, by its extreme positions in the morning and in the evening, two

17 In this connection the Hindu

symbolism of the sushumnā may be

recalled, the ray which joins every

being to the spiritual sun.

Vedagiriswarar Temple, Tirukkalukundram, Tamil Nadu

points that are connected by an East-West axis (figs 1 and 2) These

two points are taken as centers for marking out, with a cord used as a

compass, two circles that intersect to form the “fish” which gives the

North-South axis (fig 2).18

Th e intersections of other circles, centered on the four ends of the

axes thus obtained, aff ord the means of establishing the four corners of

a square; this square then appears as the “quadrature” of the solar cycle,

of which the circle round the gnomon is the direct representation (fi g

3).19

Th e rite of orientation is universal in its range We know that it

was used in the most diverse civilizations: it is mentioned in ancient

Chinese books, and Vitruvius tells us that the Romans established the

cardo and the decumanus of their cities in this way, after consulting the

augurs on the place to be chosen; there are also numerous indications

that the same procedure was used by the builders of medieval Europe

Th e reader will have noticed that the three phases of this rite

corre-( g )

18 Th e motive of the fi sh formed by the intersection of two circles, as well

as the pattern of the triple fi sh formed

by three intersecting circles, are found

in the decorative art of various peoples, notably in Egyptian art, and in the Merovingian and Romanesque arts.

19 See Mānasāra Shilpa Shāstra,

Sanskrit text edited and summarized

in English by P K Acharya (London: Oxford University Press).

Figs 1 and 2 Circles of orientation, from the Mānasāra Shilpa Shāstra

Fig 3 Circle of orientation and the fundamental square

spond to three fundamental geometrical fi gures: the circle, image of the solar cycle, the cross formed by the cardinal axes, and the square derived from it Th ese are the symbols of the Far Eastern Great Triad, Heaven-Man-Earth (fi g 4): Man appears in this hierarchy as the intermediary between Heaven and Earth, the active principle and the passive prin-ciple, just as the cross of the cardinal axes is the intermediary between the limitless cycle of the heavens and the terrestrial “square”.

According to the Hindu tradition the square obtained by the rite of orientation, which summarizes and circumscribes the plan of the tem-

ple, is the Vāstu Purusha mandala, that is to say the symbol of Purusha,

in so far as he is immanent in existence ( vāstu), or the spatial symbol of Purusha Purusha is pictured in the shape of a man stretched out in the

fundamental square, in the position of the victim in the Vedic sacrifi ce (Fig 5): his head is to the East, his feet to the West, and his two hands touch the North-west and South-east corners of the square.20 He is

none other than the primordial victim, the total being, whom the devas

sacrifi ced at the beginning of the world and who is thus “incarnated”

in the cosmos, the temple being the crystalline image of the cosmos

“Purusha (the unconditioned essence) is by himself the whole world, the past and the future From him was born Virāj (the cosmic Intel- ligence), and from Virāj was born Purusha (in his aspect as prototype of man)” ( Rig Veda X.90.5) In its limitative and as it were “arrested” form the geometrical diagram of the temple, the mandala, corresponds to the earth; but in its qualitative form it is an expression of Virāj, the cosmic

Intelligence; and fi nally in its transcendent essence it is none other than

Purusha, the Essence of all beings.

IV

The fundamental diagram of the temple is thus a symbol of the Divine Presence in the world; but from a complementary point of view

it is also an image of existence, brutish and “asuric”,21 but overcome

20 In the building of the Vedic

altar, Agni- Prajāpati as sacrifi cial

victim is represented with the face

turned towards the sky Th e crucifi x

incorporated, according to Honorius

d’Autun, in the plan of a cathedral is

in the same position.

21 Th e asūras are the conscious—and

therefore in a sense personal—

manifestations of tamas, the

“descending” tendency of existence

See René Guénon, Th e Symbolism

of the Cross (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia

Perennis, 2004).

Fig 4 Chinese ideogram of the Great Triad: Heaven-Man-Earth

and transfigured by the devas.22 These two aspects are in any case

indissolubly linked together: without the “seal” impressed on it by the

Divine Spirit, “matter” would have no intelligible form, and without

the “matter” that receives the divine “seal” and so to speak delimits it,

no kind of manifestation would be possible According to the Brihat

Samhita (LII.2-3) there was formerly, at the beginning of the present

cycle, an undefinable and unintelligible thing which “obstructed the

heavens and the earth” Seeing this, the devas suddenly seized it, and

laid it on the ground face downwards, and established themselves on

it in the positions they were in when they seized it Brahmā filled it

with devas23 and called it Vāstu Purusha This obscure thing, having

no intelligible form, is nothing but existence ( vāstu) in its tenebrous

root, in so far as it is opposed to the Light of the Essence, of which

the devas are as it were rays Through the victory which the devas win

over undifferentiated existence it receives a form; chaotic in itself, it

becomes the support of distinct qualities, and the devas in their turn

obtain a support of manifestation From this point of view the stability

of the temple comes from the direction “existence” (vāstu), and rites are

addressed to Vāstu Purusha to secure the stability of the building: the

patron ( kāraka) of the temple, its builder or its donor, identifies himself

with the asūra who became a victim of the gods and who supports the

form of the temple

Th us the Vāstu Purusha mandala is conceived from two diff erent

and apparently opposed points of view Th e Hindu spirit never loses

sight of the duality of the root of all things, for things proceed at once

from the infi nite Beauty and from the existential obscurity that veils

it, this obscurity being in its turn a mysterious function of the Infi nite,

22 A Westerner would speak of “brute matter” transformed into pure symbol

by Divine or angelic inspiration

Th e Hindu idea of existence ( vāstu)

implies to some extent this conception

of “brute matter”, but it goes much farther, existence being conceived

as the metaphysical principle of separativity.

23 Th is is the transformation from

chaos to cosmos, the fi at lux, whereby

the earth “without form and void” is

fi lled with refl ections of the divine.

Fig 5 Vāstu Purusha mandala, symbol of Purusha

for it is nothing other than the universal plastic power, Prakriti, or the Shakti24 that clothes beings with limited forms Hindu art does no more

than imitate the work of the Shakti Th e Shakti is directly present in

architecture and sculpture: a cosmic power, generous like the earth and mysterious like the serpent, appears to fl ow through the most insig-nifi cant of forms, it fi lls them with its plastic tension, while itself it is

obedient to the incorruptible geometry of the Spirit It is the Shakti that dances on the motionless body of Shiva, who represents Divinity in its

aspect as transformer of the cosmos

24 Prakriti is the passive complement

of Purusha, and the Shakti is the

dynamic aspect of Prakriti.

Goddess from a frieze in the Keshava

Temple of Somnathpur, Karnataka,

13th century

Sculptures from the Kandariya Mahadeva Temple at Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, 10th century

According to the point of view chosen, the victim incorporated in

the mandala will represent either Purusha, the universal Essence, or the

asūra overcome by the devas If it is Purusha who is seen in the victim,

the point of view carries with it an illusion, for the Divine Essence

which as it were “descends” into the forms of the world is not in reality

subject to their limitations; on the other hand, its “incorporation”—or

what appears to be such—is the prototype of all sacrifi ce, by inverse

analogy It is however only the passive nature of existence that can

re-ally undergo the sacrifi ce; it is that nature, and not the Essence, which

is transformed, so that from this point of view it is not Purusha who is

imprisoned in the plan of the temple as sacrifi cial victim, but the asūra

divinized by his sacrifi ce

Th e symbolism of the Vāstu Purusha is found among peoples who

are not attached by any historical link to the Hindu world For instance,

the Osages, a tribe of the plains of North America, look upon the ritual

arrangement of their camp as “the form and the spirit of a perfect man”

who faces the East in times of peace; “ in him is found the center, or

the innermost place, the common symbol of which is the fi re that burns

in the middle of the medicine-lodge.”25 Th e important thing is that the

encampment, arranged in a “camp-circle”, is a picture of the whole

cos-mos: the half of the tribe which is situated to the Northward represents

Heaven, while the other half living on the South side symbolizes the

Earth Th e fact that the ritual bounds of the area are in this case in

the shape of a circle and not, as in the case of a temple, a square or a

rectangle, is explained by the “style” of the nomadic life, and in no way

invalidates the analogy in question Th e assimilation of the form of the

temple to that of the human body is moreover to some extent paralleled

in the sacred calumet which itself was “a sort of corporeal type of that

ideal man who becomes the gnomon of the sensible universe .”26

Th e same symbolism is found elsewhere in the idea that a

dura-ble building must be founded on a living being: hence the practice of

walling a sacrifi cial victim into the foundations In some cases it is the

shadow of a living man that is “caught” and symbolically incorporated

into the building.27 Such things are doubtless distant echoes of the rite

of the stabilization of the temple ( Vastushānti), or of the idea of a victim

at once divine and human incorporated into the temple of the world

An analogous conception is that of the Christian temple as the body of

the Divine Man.28

V

Th e Vāstu Purusha mandala, the outline of which is derived from the

rite of orientation, is subdivided into a number of lesser squares; they

form a network within which the foundations of the building are laid

25 See Hartley Burr Alexander,

L’Art et la Philosophie des Indiens de l’Amérique du Nord (Paris: Ernest

of Christian Art” in the author’s

Sacred Art in East and West and

Th e Foundations of Christian Art

(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006).

Samiddheshvara Temple, Chittogarh, Rajasthan, 11th century

Brihadishwara Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, 11th century

out Th e analogy between the cosmos and the plan of the temple is

car-ried right through into the plan of the internal arrangements, in which

each lesser square corresponds to one of the phases of the great cosmic

cycles and to the deva who rules over it Only the central area,

consist-ing of one or several lesser squares, is symbolically situated outside the

cosmic order: it is the Brahmāsthana, the place where Brahmā dwells

Over this central area the “chamber of the embryo” ( Garbhagriha) is

erected, in the form of a cube; it will hold the symbol of the Divinity to

whom the temple is consecrated

Th ere are 32 types of Vāstu Purusha mandala, distinguished by the

number of their lesser squares Th ese types are divided into two groups,

those with an odd number of lesser squares, and those with an even

number of internal divisions Th e fi rst series is developed from the

fun-damental mandala of nine squares which is more particularly a symbol

of the earth ( Prithivī) or of the terrestrial environment; the central

square corresponds to the center of this world and the eight peripheral

squares to the cardinal regions and the four intermediate regions of

space; it could be said to represent the “rose of the winds” with eight

directions in a square form (fi g 6) As for the mandalas with an even

number of divisions, their central feature is a block of four squares

(fi g 7): it constitutes the symbol of Shiva, Divinity in its aspect of

transformer We have seen that the quaternary rhythm, of which this

mandala is as it were the spatial fi xation, expresses the principle of time;

it may be looked on as the “static” form of the cosmic wheel with four

spokes, or divided into its four phases It will be observed that this type

of mandala has no central square, the “center” of time being the eternal

present

Th ere are two mandalas that are specially favored for the

symboli-cal plan of the temple, one with 64 lesser squares and one with 81 It

should be noted that the numbers 64 and 81 are sub-multiples of the

fundamental cyclical number 25,920, the number of years comprised

in a complete precession of the equinoxes: 64 x 81 x 5 = 25,920 Th e

factor 5 corresponds to the cycle of fi ve lunar-solar years (samvatsara)

Th e precession of the equinoxes is the ultimate measure of the cosmos,

and in itself it is only measurable in terms of lesser cycles Each of these

The garbhagriha of the Lakshmana

Temple in Khajuraho, holding the image

of Vishnu, 10th century

Figs 6 and 7 Mandalas of nine and of four divisions

mandalas thus represents an “abbreviation” of the universe conceived as

the “sum” of all the cosmic cycles.29

It has already been indicated that the central “fi eld” of the mandala represents the Brahmāsthana, the “station” of Brahmā; in the mandala of

64 squares it occupies four central squares, in the mandala of 81 squares,

nine In this fi eld is erected the chamber of the center, which houses the symbol of the titular divinity of the temple and is analogous to the

“golden embryo” ( Hiranyagarbha), the luminous germ of the cosmos

(fi gs 8 and 9)

Th e squares surrounding the Brahmāsthana, with the exception of those at the outer edges of the mandala, are assigned to the twelve solar divinities ( Adityas), whose number is reduced essentially to eight, since

eight of them make up hierogamic couples Th us the divine powers

ra-diating from the station of Brahmā diverge along the eight principal

directions of space Th e eight directions again are associated with the eight planets of the Hindu system: the fi ve planets properly so called,

the sun, the moon, and the demon of the eclipse ( Rāhu) As for the outside squares, they represent the lunar cycle: in the mandala of 64

squares the border of 28 divisions corresponds to the 28 lunar

man-sions; in the mandala of 81 squares the “domains” of the four guardians

of the cardinal regions are added In both cases the cycle of the border

is dominated by the 32 regents of the universe ( Padadevatās) who are

refl ected in the qualities of space Th eir hierarchy is derived from the quaternary division of space, expanded in the series 4-8-16-32; in the

mandala of 64 squares four pairs of the said regents occupy the corners

of the principal square.30 Th e diff erence between the two mandalas of

64 and of 81 squares is thus essentially the same as that which

distin-guishes the two simplest mandalas, respectively dedicated to Prithivī

and to Shiva, or to the principle of extension and the principle of time

Th e fi rst named marks the cross of the cardinal axes by bands of squares, the second indicates it only by lines

29 In the solstitial rite of the “ Sun

Dance” the Arapaho Indians build a

great lodge, in the middle of which

stands the sacred tree, representing

the axis of the world Th e lodge is

constructed of twenty-eight pillars

erected in a circle, and sustaining the

rafters of the roof which meet the tree

in the center On the other hand the

lodge of the Crow Indians is open

above, while the space surrounding

the central tree is divided into twelve

sections in which the dancers take

their places In both cases the form of

the sanctuary is related to two cycles,

that of the sun, and that of the moon

In the fi rst case the lunar cycle is

represented by the twenty-eight pillars

of the enclosure, corresponding to the

twenty-eight lunar mansions; in the

second case it is represented by the

twelve months.

Th e rites accompanying the

erection of the tree for the “ Sun

Dance” show striking analogies with

the Hindu rites connected with the

erection of the sacrifi cial post, which

is also the axis of the world and the

cosmic tree.

30 In certain cosmological diagrams

met with in Islamic esoterism, the

phases of the celestial cycles are ruled

over by angels, who in their turn

manifest Divine Names On this

subject see the author’s study, Mystical

Astrology according to Ibn ‘Arabi

(Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2002).

Fig 8 Mandala of 64 divisions after

Stella Kramrisch

Fig 9 Mandala of 81 divisions after

Stella Kramrisch

Regarded as a cosmological diagram the Vāstu Purusha mandala

fi xes and coordinates the cycles of the sun and of the moon;31 the

diver-gent rhythms of these two fundamental cycles could be said to refl ect

the infi nitely varied theme of becoming In a certain sense the world

en-dures for as long as the sun and the moon, the “male” and the “female”,

are not united; that is to say, for as long as their respective cycles do not

coincide Th e two types of mandala are like two complementary fi

gu-rations of the resolution of the two cycles into a single timeless order

Th rough this cosmological aspect the Vāstu Purusha mandala refl ects the

hierarchy of the divine functions Th e various “aspects” of Being, as well

as the diverse functions of the Universal Spirit, the cosmic

manifesta-tion of Being, can indeed be conceived as so many direcmanifesta-tions comprised

in the totality of space, or as so many “facets” of a regular polygon, their

symmetry betraying the unity of their common principle Th at is why

the Vāstu Purusha mandala is also the seal of Virāj, the cosmic

intelli-gence issuing from the supreme Purusha.32

An eff ective transformation of the cosmic cycles, or more precisely

of the celestial movements, into crystalline form is also found in the

symbolism of the sacred city Th e mandala par excellence containing 64

squares is compared with the unconquerable city of the gods ( Ayodhya)

which is described in the Rāmāyana as a square with eight

compart-ments on each side Th is city holds in its center the abode of God

(Brah-mapura), just as the plan of the temple contains the Brahmāsthana In

31 It is worthy of note that the traditional diagram of the horoscope, representing the ecliptic, is also square

32 Th e directions of space correspond very naturally to the Divine Aspects

or Qualities, for they are the result

of the polarization with respect to a given center of a space that as such

is limitless and undiff erentiated Th e center chosen then corresponds to the “germ” of the world It may be observed in passing that the “magic square”, which serves to “coagulate” subtle forces for the performance

of a predetermined operation, is a

distant derivative of the Vāstu Purusha

mandala.

Diagram of the Vāstu Purusha mandala of 81 divisions

The Heavenly Jerusalem, the Morgan

Beatus, Spain, 10th century